This site reprints pages 1-27 of American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of A Thousand Witnesses (1839). To go to the "Table of Contents" immediately, click here.
During the pre-Civil War slavery era, slavers themselves recorded their brutalities against slaves. This site reprints from the pre-Civil War slavery era, writings by slaveholders in the slave states, descriptions of how they treated slaves. Abuses, torture, and brutality abounded. Slavers printed these atrocity stories in their own Southern newspapers.
Escaped slaves would also report the atrocities, see, e.g., Solomon Northup, Twelve Years A Slave (1853), and movie versions, e.g.,
Solomon Northup's Odyssey (PBS, 1984), and 12 Years a Slave (2013) (on his being kidnapped in 1841 and not freed until 1853, and the atrocities documented in that 12 year period).
Rev. Theodore Weld, and sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimké (from South Carolina) were reading Southern newspapers of the 1837-1839 period, discovered the slavers' own news reports, and assembled these slaver-written materials. Thereafter, slavers began to conceal the abuses, as they had not expected that anyone would reprint and widely circulate their own words admitting to each other their brutalities
Preparatory to reading this site, familiarity with the data showing slavery to have been illegal and unconstitutional is advised.
A modern parallel occurred in Nazi Germany where people were brutalized regardless of the economic and other adverse impacts on the people and on society as a whole. Slavery was like that, the primacy of brutality, rape, and abuses, with 'work' being a secondary, or non-, consideration.
Slavery, 200-years of hunting safaris, intending to kill the hunted, that's the reality, debunking the myth of 'kind treatment as the slaves were valuable.' People pay large sums for hunting, intending that deaths result among the hunted!
Most slaves were killed; just as now, with deer-hunting, duck-hunting, etc., the killings are not considered wrongful. Only among abolitionists was there significant opposition.
Rev. Weld earlier (1837) had written The Bible Against Slavery.

AMERICAN SLAVERY AS IT IS:TESTIMONY OFA THOUSAND WITNESSES
written by Slaveholders (1837-1839)Assembled by Rev. Theodore Dwight Weldand Angelina and Sarah Grimké (1839)

"The righteous CONSIDERETH the cause of the poorbut the wicked regardeth not to know it."—PROV, 29.7.

"True humanity consists not In a SQUEAMISH EAR, but in listening to the story of human sufferingand endeavoring to relieve it."—CHARLES JAMES FOX.

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NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY,
OFFICE, No. 143 NASSAU STREET.
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1839.

ADVERTISEMENT [PREFACE] TO THE READER.

A MAJORITY of the facts and testimony contained in this work rests upon the authority of SLAVEHOLDERS, whose names and residences are given to the public, as vouchers for the truth of their statements. That they should utter falsehoods, for the sake of proclaiming their own infamy, is not probable.

Their testimony is taken mainly, from recent newspapers, published in the slave states. Most of those papers will be deposited at the office of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 143 Nassau Street, New York City. Those who think the atrocities, which they describe, incredible are invited to call and read for themselves. We regret that all of the original papers are not in our possession. The idea of preserving them on file for the inspection of the incredulous, and the curious, did not occur to us until after the preparation of the work was in a state of forwardness, in consequence of this, some of the papers cannot be recovered. Nearly all of them, however have been preserved. In all cases the name of the paper is given, and, with very few exceptions, the place and time, (year, month, and day) of publication. Some of the extracts, however not being made with reference to this work, and before its publication was contemplated, are without date but this class of extracts is exceedingly small, probably not a thirtieth of the whole.

The statements, not derived from the papers and other periodicals, letters, books, &c., published by slaveholders, have been furnished by individuals who have resided in slave states, many of whom are natives of those states, and have been slaveholders. The names, residences, &c.
of the witnesses generally are given. A number of them, however, still reside in slave states—to publish their names would be, in most cases, to make them the victims of popular fury.